The willpower instinct by Kelly McGonigal
How self-control works, why it matters and what you can do to get
more of it.
[Author created a course for Stanford University on this topic and this book is the course
book].
Our ability to control our attention, emotions, appetites and behavior,
not only greatly influences our health, financial security, relationship and
professional success. To succeed at self-control you need to know how you fail.
Willpower is about harnessing the three powers of I will, I won’t
and I want to help you to achieve your goals. Just a few generations ago, your
responsibilities in life would have been so simple. 1. Find dinner, 2. Reproduce,
3. Avoid unexpected encounters. Back to modern-day life, willpower has gone
from being the thing that distinguishes us humans from other animals to the
thing that distinguishes us from each other. Our modern powers of self-control
are the product of long-ago pressures to be better neighbors, parents and mates.
Every willpower challenge requires doing something difficult,
whether it is walking away from temptation or not running away from a stressful
situation. Every willpower challenge is a conflict between two parts of oneself
- the impulsive version and wiser version. To have more self-control, you first
need to develop more self-awareness.
Neuroscientists have discovered that like an eager student, the
brain is remarkably responsive to experience. Ask your brain to do math every
day, and it gets better at math. Ask your brain to worry and it gets better at
worrying. Ask your brain to concentrate, and it gets better at concentrating.
Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to mediate, it gets
better, not just at mediating, but at a wide range of self-control skills,
including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control and
self-awareness. Over time, with regular medication, brains become finely tuned will
power machines. Breath focus is a simple but a powerful meditation technique
for training your brain and increasing willpower.
When people are under stress, the sympathetic nervous system
(impulsive version) takes over, which is part of basic biology that helps
you fight or flee. In contrast, when people successfully exert self-control,
the nervous system steps in calm stress and control impulsive action. Exercise
turns out to be the closest thing to wonder drug that self control scientists
have discovered.
Willpower instinct is a wonderful thing, but all of the mental
tasks - focusing your attention, weighing competing goals, and quieting stress
and carving - require physical energy from your body, in the same way your
muscles require energy to fight or flee in an emergency. Some scientists
speculate that chronic self-control - like chronic stress - can increase your
chance of getting sick by diverting resources from the immune system. One of
the best ways to recover from stress is relaxation which will help your body to
recover from the physiological effects of chronic stress or heroic control.
Willpower can be disrupted by sleep deprivation, poor diet, a
sedentary lifestyle and a host of other factors that sap your energy or keep
your brain and body stuck in a chronic stress response. Stress is enemy of will
power. Tired, stressed-out people start from a tremendous disadvantage and our
bad habits - from overeating to under-sleeping, not only reflect lack of
self-control, but also draining our energy and creating more stress.
Researchers have found that self-control is highest in the morning
and steadily deteriorates over the course of the day. In study after study no
matter what, people’s self-control deteriorated over time. A concentration task
didn’t just lead to worse attention over time; it depleted physical strength.
Controlling emotions didn’t just lead to emotional outbursts; it made people
more willing to spend money on something they didn’t need. It was as if every
act of willpower was drawing from the same source of strength, leaving people
weaker with each successful act of self-control.
Roy Baumeister (a psychologist at Florida State University) led us
to the following hypothesis: that self-control is like a muscle. When used, it
gets tired. If you don’t rest the muscle, you can run out of strength entirely,
like an athlete who pushes himself to exhaustion. A brain that could bias your
decision toward immediate gratification when resources are scarce. If you never
seem to have the time and energy for your “I will” challenge, schedule it for
when you have the most strength. In fact, type 2 diabetes is for all practical purposes
the same as chronic low blood sugar person, because, the brain and body cannot
efficiently use the energy that is available. This is likely one reason people
with uncontrolled diabetes show impaired self-control and deficits in
prefrontal cortex function. This is one of the reasons, recommendation to have
a good breakfast on work week where brain needs more energy.
When you are trying to make a big change or transform an old
habit, look for a small way to practice self-control that strengthen your
willpower, but doesn’t overwhelm it completely. The next time you find yourself
‘too tired’ to exert self-control, challenge yourself to go beyond that first
feeling of fatigue. When you find your biggest want power - the motivation that
gives you strength when you feel weak - bring it to mind whenever you find
yourself most tempted to give in or give up.
When a halo effect is getting in the way of your willpower
challenge, look for the most concrete measure (e.g. Calories, cost, time spent
or wasted) of whether a choice is consistent with your goals. For better
self-control, forget virtue, and focus on goals and values.
When we add the instant gratification of modern technology to this
primitive motivational system, we end up with dopamine-delivery devices that
are damn near impossible to put down. Cell phones, the internet, and other
social media may have accidentally exploited our reward system, but computer and
video game designers intentionally manipulate the reward system to keep players
hooked. High levels of dopamine amplify the lure of immediate gratification,
while making you less concerned about long-term consequences.
Marketing researchers at Stanford University have shown that food
and drink samples make shoppers hungrier and thirstier, and put shoppers in a
reward-seeking state of mind. Because samples combine two of the biggest
promises of reward: Free and Food. Business also use smells to manufacture
desire where none existed. An appetizing odor is one of the fastest ways to
trigger the promise of reward and as soon as the scented molecules land on your
olfactory receptors, the brain will bring searching for the source. The next
time you walk by a fast food restaurant and are tempted by the smell of french
fries and burgers, it is safe bet you don't smell the food inside, but a
carefully manufactured scent being piped onto the sidewalk through special
vents. The website of Scent Air (scentair.com) runs gamut from Fresh
Linen to Birthday Cake and they brags about how it lured visitors into an ice
cream parlor on the lower level of a hotel.
We want to feel our desires and we delight in a world that puts
them on constant display for us to dream about. That’s why people like window
shopping, flipping through luxury magazines, and touring open houses. When you
really understand how a so-called reward makes you feel, you will be better-able
to make smart decisions about whether and how to reward yourself.
According to the American Psychological Association, the most
effective stress-relief strategies are exercising, or playing sports, praying
or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time
with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, mediating
yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby.
Promising and encouraging student to keep going, if the goal is
important and any effort made now would take the student closer to the goal
(the reward in the future will drive students to reach their goal - motivate
your future self). Our inability to clearly see the future clearly leads us
into temptation and procrastination. A recommendation is to create a future
memory, write a letter to your future self or just imagine yourself in the
future.
There are three ways our social brains can catch willpower
failures. The first is unintentional mimicry. The mirror neurons that detect
another person’s movement prime that very same movement in your own body
(drinking habit). The second way is the contagion of emotion - e.g. coworkers
bad mood can become our bad-mood. Thirdly, our brain can even catch temptation
when we see others give in - e.g. we eat more with others than when we are
alone. Self control is influenced by social-proof, making both will power and
temptation contagious.
Each time, the mere act of trying not to think about something
triggered a paradoxical effect: people thought about it more than when they
weren’t trying to control their thoughts, and even more than when they were
intentionally trying to think about it. This effect was strongest when people
were already stressed out, tired or distracted. If we want to save ourselves
from mental suffering, we need to make peace with those thoughts, not push them
away. When an urge takes hold, stay with the physical sensation and ride
them like a wave, neither pushing them away nor acting on them.
If there is a secret of greater self-control, the science points
to one thing: the power of paying attention. It’s training the mind to
recognize when you are making a choice, rather than running on autopilot. It’s
noticing how you give yourself permission to procrastinate, or how you use good
behavior to justify self-indulgence. It is realizing that the promise of reward
doesn’t always deliver, and that your future self is not a superhero or a
stranger. It is seeing what you in your world - from sales gimmicks to social
proof - is shaping your behavior. It’s remembering what you really want and
knowing what really makes you feel better. Self Awareness is the one self you
can always count on to help you do what is difficult and what matters most. And
that is the best definition of willpower I can think of.
